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After the United States captured Venezuela’s president in January and increased economic pressure on Cuba in the following months, many wondered if the White House’s next target would be Nicaragua, another Latin American country with an autocratic leader, who this week ruled out the possibility of new elections.
However, the US has done little to signal that it will take imminent action in Nicaragua, while the country’s co-presidents – Daniel Ortega and wife Rosario Murillo – have largely kept a low profile and avoided provoking the Trump administration.
In fact, days after the US operation in Venezuela, Nicaragua announced measures that were interpreted as gestures toward Washington. It freed dozens of prisoners after the US demanded their release and subsequently reinstated a visa requirement for Cubans that limited their migration toward North America.
In April, the US imposed new sanctions on Nicaraguan officials, this time, targeting two of Ortega and Murillo’s sons. Moreover, Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised the tone toward Managua and recently condemned Ortega’s declaration to scrap elections, but he has so far stopped short of proposing regime change as he has explicitly done with Cuba.
